Daily Kos

Hillary Clinton hasn’t always been a profile in political courage, but she’s had her moments. One of them came in late December 2006, a month before Clinton announced her first run for the presidency, as she huddled with her team to discuss policy proposals to differentiate her from two rivals flanking her on the left, Barack Obama and John Edwards.The conversation, which included former Clinton White House aides like Gene Sperling and Neera Tanden, who still have the candidate’s ear today, bogged down on the biggest, nastiest policy fight of her life, health care. Several of Clinton’s top advisers, the ’90s debacle fresh in everyone’s mind, counseled her to avoid proposing an individual mandate, the politically unpopular requirement that the uninsured buy insurance or face penalties.

When it came to the widely unpopular individual mandate, however, she was adamant about plowing ahead, according to a former aide who related the story.

“If I run for president, I’m going to run on universal health care,” Clinton told the group—and authorized attacks on her Democratic opponent Obama for opposing a mandate (he would eventually embrace it as president, much to Clinton’s amusement).
“What’s the point of running if I’m not going to run on universal health care?” she asked her team.

I thought I’d go through Clinton’s stances on the issues, to see if that sheds more light on what she’s really up to. Short version: Clinton is indeed ministering to Obama coalition voter groups — minorities, millennials, college educated whites. But nonetheless, she’s thus far campaigning like a mainstream Democrat. In fact, those things are now two sides of the same coin. Meanwhile, very few of her positions thus far preclude reaching beyond those groups.

And when Hillaryadapts and adopts Bernie’s positions, she’ll be center, too.More politics and policy below the fold.

House progressives may have just had their tea-party moment.They went toe-to-toe Friday with their own president, the business community, and moderates of all stripes—and they won big.

In overwhelming numbers, Democrats torpedoed a bill that would have moved President Obama closer to the landmark trade deal he’s been seeking. And they did so hours after he visited Capitol Hill to make a personal appeal to their caucus.

The trade drama was only the latest skirmish in a broader intraparty war, with organized labor and economic populists such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren on one side, and a dwindling corps of business- and Wall Street-friendly Democrats on the other. Increasingly, the political momentum and passion within the party is moving toward the first group.

Halperin, the co-author of Game Change and former Time Magazine political analyst, is the only journalist listed on the bill of “enthusiast sessions.” He and Ann Romney will co-host a “Sunrise Pilates” class for the retreat’s attendees on Saturday morning at 6:30 a.m. Other journalists are in attendance reporting on the event.

Halperin did not respond to a request for comment regarding his decision to co-host an event for Republican donors alongside the wife of a prominent Republican politician. A Bloomberg spokesperson declined to comment.

Remember, Halperin isn’t just a jerk, he’s a Republican jerk. Don’t let him tell you different. It’s why everything is good for John McCain.WaPo:

“We tried tall, good lookin’, smart, nice, great family,” [Lindsey] Graham told donors Friday in a playful nod to Romney. “Vote for me. We’re not going down that road again!”Republicans have 10 declared candidates and counting, but they have no front-runner — not even the descendant of the closest the GOP has to a royal family. Former Florida governor Jeb Bush has struggled ahead of his official campaign launch on Monday, and he skipped the Romney confab because he was traveling in Europe.

Fox News has changed its plan for the first Republican presidential debate to give second-tier candidates some airtime after a New Hampshire newspaper announced its own competing forum for B-list contenders.According to plans announced late Wednesday, Fox now will host a 90-minute televised forum in Cleveland on the afternoon of August 6 for​ ​Republican candidates who fail to qualify for that ​evening’s 90-minute debate.

RNC officials and campaign staffers had been pressuring Fox for weeks to do exactly this, some even predicting that the vacuum would be filled by another media outlet. A Fox spokeswoman challenged the notion that Fox had changed its plans, saying the cable network always intended to cover the candidates who did not make the prime-time cut.

60 Minutes will feature: a look at Colorado after the state became the first to legalize recreational pot (preview); an investigation into allegations that thousands of homeowners were denied their flood insurance claims after Hurricane Sandy because of fraudulent engineers’ reports (preview); and, an interview with actor Bradley Cooper (preview).

60 Minutes will feature: a report from inside Iran as the prospect of a nuclear deal with world powers looms on the horizon (preview); a report on the 150-year history of the Capitol Dome (preview); and, a report on an orchestra in Paraguay that fashions musical instruments from refuse scavenged at a dump (preview).

The Nation reported today that Chris Christie’s “hatchet men” Bill Baroni and David Wildstein, along with the Port Authority’s Chairman David “The General” Samson, headed a scheme to reconstruct the Bayonne Bridge ten years before it really needed it. Christie touted the efforts in his recent successful reelection bid.

I didn’t see this diaried yet, but I will take it down if someone else covered it already.

The Nation‘s Christie Watch crew does an excellent job of reviewing the nefarious deeds of this crew, including this weekend’s release of the toll hike theater. Today’s post focuses on the Bayonne Bridge project, a $1.2 billion project awarded to construction firm Skanska Koch, a client of, wait for it, Wolff & Samson. The project also won the support of the Laborers’ International Union.

The Bayonne project existed before Christie was elected to his first term, but really took off after his administration was installed. Baroni rallied his troops around him and pushed the project through with the help of Wildstein and, it would seem, Samson. The Nation’s sources claim Samson was a hands-on manager who would meet with Baroni and Wildstein for two hours at a time.

They created a “climate of fear” inside the PA, the source said. And, he added, Baroni and Wildstein were often closeted with David Samson, the PA chairman and Christie’s political mentor. Samson, who has been accused of using his position as PA chairman to benefit his law firm, and whose resignation has been demanded by the Star-Ledger, was a highly engaged and activist chairman, said the source, adding that that was very unusual for a chairman. “Samson was in the office a minimum two, sometimes three times a week and [Baroni and Wildstein] would be behind closed doors with the chairman for two hours at a time,” he said.Baroni and Wildstein, the latter of whom maintained a secret list of favored officials, conspired inside the PA to press for the toll hikes. Along with $1.8 billion in federal and PA funds used by Christie for pet projects after he canceled a plan to build a new Hudson River transit tunnel, the toll hikes and the PA’s more recent PA’s capital spending plan created a tidal wave of new cash for Christie to spend as saw fit. In an editorial on March 4, the Star-Ledger said in an editorial that all these funds created a “piggy bank” for Christie, and it quoted John Wisniewski, chairman of the committee investigating the lane closures at the George Washington Bridge, who said, “It’s a slush fund.” According to the Star-Ledger’s news article, Baroni and Wildstein also organized a cabal inside the PA over the toll hikes.

The article is totally worth the read, whether you follow every twist and turn or if you need a primer.Thanks for the recs! Please visit jamess’s diary, “It’s a slush fund.” He had the story first.

Evening lineup:

60 Minutes will feature: a report on technological advances, especially robotics, that are revolutionizing the workplace, but not necessarily creating jobs (preview); an interview with Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayer (preview); and, a report on the extreme sport of free diving, in which divers reach great depths on one breath (preview).